Monday, August 24, 2015

Zillow is a giant in the real estate industry.They aggregate tons and tons of data, and a lot of it is actually quite useful to the average consumer, but you need to take some of it with a grain of salt.

One thing in particular that you need to watch out for is the Zestimate, which is Zillow's valuation of your home.How accurate is that value that Zillow places on your home?

In North Orange County and North LA County, the median error is 9.8%.That's a huge error on a $500,000 home. It has also been stated that nearly every home value on the website is off by 5% or more. This is a huge margin of error.

These estimates work well with communities that have similar homes, but with mixed communities like we have in LA, it's hard for Zillow's algorithms to place accurate values on homes.

Just this month we sold a home that Zillow valued at $620,000, but the true and accurate value was much higher, and we managed to sell it for $679,000. Can you imagine losing $60,000 in equity?

If you truly want to know the value of your Orange County home, please don't hesitate to contact me. I would be very happy to assist you!